AskHistorians is not a political forum, in the usual sense of the word. We are known for restricting content using our longstanding ’20 Year Rule’, limiting questions and answers from directly dealing with contemporary subjects.

However, AskHistorians is not neutral. This and other rules do not exist to foster an arbitrary ‘balance’ of perspectives, but rather to enable and promote high-quality scholarship. It is our collective view that developing deeper shared knowledge of history is in itself a public good, that seeking to understand the reality of the human past can often be an inherently political – even radical – act. 

The nature of this conference means that enforcing such a rule strictly is neither practical nor desirable. In real life, historical scholarship does not have a neat, agreed-upon cut-off date, nor do historians limit themselves to discussing the past with no reference to the present day. As such, we have not asked speakers to artificially limit what they say during papers and discussions – they are not responding to user-generated questions, but rather framing their own work and knowledge in the best ways they see fit. The specific views they express are their own, and not necessarily those of AskHistorians or its moderators. However, in providing a venue to showcase these scholars, we aim to fulfill our core mission – providing new windows into the past, and challenging the ways that we engage with it in the present.